December 2020 Human Sexuality in Catholic Education atholic education is committed to the pursuit of truth and promotion of the Gospel. Central C to its mission is the integral formation of students’ minds, hearts, and bodies in truth and holiness. A significant challenge toward this end is confusion in the common culture regarding the nature of human sexuality. The Catholic Church has a deep and rich understanding of the human person informed by natural law and firmly rooted in Christian revelation, which is its privilege and duty to proclaim and which the culture desperately needs to hear. Errors in understanding human sexuality can lead to errors in understanding human nature, the moral order, and even truth and reality itself. Catholic education’s proclamation of the full truth of humanity requires both sensitivity and courage. It requires clarity, charity, and integrity. It requires loving pastoral responses and clearly articulated beliefs, standards, and policies. Such pastoral efforts and policies should support the mission of Catholic education, be consistent with Church teaching, and be based on a sound Christian anthropology (i.e., concept of the human person). This concept derives from the overarching biblical vision of the human person, which proposes that we find our deepest identity and happiness only by making a sincere gift of ourselves to others. God made men and women as complementary creatures who are naturally ordered to the special union of one man and one woman in marriage. Central as well to the Christian concept of the human person is that God made both men and women in His image, of equal and immense dignity, existing as a unity of body and soul, and destined for union with Him according to His plan. To counteract confusion in the common culture and to ensure that Catholic educational institutions fulfill their missions, it is essential to establish policies that foster a true account of the human person and of human sexuality consonant with Church teaching. Such policies justly ensure that employees, volunteers, and students are fully aware of their obligations and the Copyright © 2020 The Cardinal Newman Society. Permission to reprint without modification to text and with attribution to author and to The Cardinal Newman Society. The Cardinal Newman Society Human Sexuality in Catholic Education institution’s principles, priorities, and commitments, and they help guard against error and disoriented notions of the human person. Because modeling and personal witness are essential to the process of education, all members of a Catholic educational community should strive for virtue, guided by the teachings of the Catholic Church. Pastoral and policy practices will therefore necessarily touch on a broad array of activities beyond the strictly academic, in Catholic education’s attempts to promote the integral formation of student’s minds, bodies, and souls. This broader goal is served by explicit efforts at developing moral, theological, and academic virtues. Development of these human excellences are critical to human freedom and fulfillment. By modeling moral freedom “grounded on those absolute values which alone give meaning and value to human life,”1 Catholic schools and colleges fulfill their obligation to be “places of evangelization”2 and equip students to be “leaven in the human community.”3 It is hard to overstate how radical the sexual revolution has been and how far-reaching and devastating its consequences to the human community. It has physically, morally, and spiritually destroyed countless individuals, families, children, and communities. Catholic educators must be astutely aware of the challenges posed by the sexual culture, prepared to bravely confront it, and equipped with educational principles and policies to deal with the crisis it has created. The following principles and standards, deeply informed by guidance from the Church, aim to assist in this regard. Principles Principle 1: A key aspect of the mission of Catholic education is the integral formation of the human person. This key aspect of integral formation, especially as it relates to human sexuality, should be reflected in institutional policies. This type of formation is rooted in the Church’s philosophy of the human person, who is seen as a complex and multi-faceted being, striving for full human flourishing in their physical, moral, spiritual, psychological, social, and intellectual faculties.4 Canon Law affirms: 1 Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (1977) 9. 2 Congregation for Catholic Education, Catholic Schools on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (1997) 11. 3 Saint Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis (1965) 8. 4 Congregation for Catholic Education, Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education (2019) 3; citing Congregation for Catholic Education, Educational Guidance in Human Love: Outlines for Sex Education (1983) 5. 2 The Cardinal Newman Society Human Sexuality in Catholic Education Since true education must strive for complete formation of the human person that looks to his or her final end as well as to the common good of societies, children and youth are to be nurtured in such a way that they are able to develop their physical, moral, and intellectual talents harmoniously, acquire a more perfect sense of responsibility and right use of freedom, and are formed to participate actively in social life.5 Catholic schools and colleges are also obligated to be “places of evangelization”6 to bring students to the fullness of truth and disposing them to salvation in Christ and service to the common good.7 The mission includes empowering students to be “a saving leaven in the human community”8 through apostolic witness and modeling of a Catholic understanding of moral freedom, which is “grounded on those absolute values which alone give meaning and value to human life.”9 Catholic schools and colleges are not simply educational organizations designed to satisfy the intellects of students with academic content. Rather, their “primary responsibility is one of witness”10 and instruction in the truth of God and the world through complete integral human formation: The integral formation of the human person, which is the purpose of education, includes the development of all the human faculties of the students, together with preparation for professional life, formation of ethical and social awareness, becoming aware of the transcendental, and religious education.11 In all they do, Catholic educators “must consider the totality of the person and insist therefore on the integration of the biological, psycho-affective, social, and spiritual elements.”12 This is a distinctly different view of the person than is currently promoted in much of common culture, which presents a disaggregation of these elements in an effort to empower the will, instill a false sense of freedom, and remove the divine. 5 Code of Canon Law (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983) 795. 6 Congregation for Catholic Education, Catholic Schools on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (1997) 11. 7 Saint John Paul II, Ex corde Ecclesiae (1990) 4. 8 Saint Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis (1965) 8. 9 Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (1977) 9. 10 Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating in Intercultural Dialogue in the Catholic School: Living in Harmony for a Civilization of Love (2013) 57. 11 Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith (1982) 17. 12 Congregation for Catholic Education (2019) 3. 3 The Cardinal Newman Society Human Sexuality in Catholic Education Principle 2: Catholic education is founded upon a sound Christian anthropology, which describes the human person as “a being at once corporeal and spiritual,”13 made in the image of God,14 with complementarity and equality of the sexes as male and female.15 The Congregation for Catholic Education emphasizes that: In today’s pluralistic world, the Catholic educator must consciously inspire his or her activity with the Christian concept of the person, in communion with the Magisterium of the Church.16 Some fundamental tenets of a Christian concept of the human person include that God created each person body and soul (Gen. 1:27) and that: The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit. Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.17 This bodily nature includes a biological sexual reality that shares in God’s creative plan for the good. “Being man” or “being woman” is a reality which is good and willed by God: man and woman possess an inalienable dignity which comes to them immediately from God their Creator.18 The conjugal union of man and woman is naturally ordered toward the good of marriage and family: In marriage the physical intimacy of the spouses becomes a sign and pledge of spiritual communion. Marriage bonds between baptized persons are sanctified by the sacrament. “Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is not something simply biological, but 13 Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993) 362. 14 Catechism 355. 15 Catechism 355, 369. 16 Congregation for Catholic Education (1982) 18.